mount root (/) again after mistake, without /etc/

Question

I think I accidentally mounted /dev/hde1 to / after formatting another disk with

 mkdosfs -F 32 -I /dev/hde1

/dev/hdc1 should be mounted on /
but now there is no way to remount it again since /etc/fstab is either readable nor writable, / is empty as the disk /dev/hde1 is.
How do I remount /dev/hdc1 without /etc/

fdisk -l gives only info about /dev/hde (but I already disconnected it) it seems old information umount /dev/hde says it is not mounted after all, possibly nothing is mounted to /

$ cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name

  22     0  976554308 hdc
  22     1    2048000 hdc1
  22     2     256000 hdc2
  22     3          1 hdc3
  22     5  974242112 hdc5
  31     0       1024 mtdblock0
  31     1      64496 mtdblock1
  33     0  976554308 hde
  33     1  976551156 hde1
 254     0  974225408 dm-0
   8    16 1953514584 sdb
   8    17 1953512448 sdb1
   8    32  390711384 sdc
   8    33   40161280 sdc1
   8    34  350546332 sdc2


$ mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
/dev/root on /initrd type ext2 (rw)
tmpfs on /USB type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/hdc1 on / type ext3 (ro,data=journal)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
tmpfs on /ramfs type ramfs (rw)
/dev/c/c on /c type ext3 (rw,noatime,data=ordered,usrquota,grpquota)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
/dev/sda2 on /USB/USB_HDD_1 type ext3 (ro,noatime,data=journal)

is how it should be, but also old information

I tried:

$ mount /dev/hdc1 / -t ext3
can't create lock file /etc/mtab~2509: No such file or directory (use -n flag to override)

$ mount /dev/hdc1 / -t ext3 -n
mount: /dev/hdc1 is not a block device, and stat fails?

It is a closed system (readynas) and stores all my pictures these are still accessible, but I cannot mount new external disks to copy the pictures to, although dmesg sees the disk, I cannot mount it the normal way either

Answer 1

Have you tried rebooting it? Since you didn't edit the /etc/fstab file, it should reset the mount points automatically when it reboots. Optionally, you can also try umount /dev/hde1 to remove just that one mount.

Answer 2

Perhaps:

• Create a new directory in an existing directory you can still access.
• mount this new directory to /dev/hdc1.

Presumably the full / tree, including /etc, should then be accessible through the ad hoc mountpoint.

• Check /etc/fstab for correctness, editing it to be correct if it's not.
• Reboot.